[csaa-forum] Programme and Registrations: 'Not another hijab row'

[Tanja Dreher]

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'Not another hijab row': New conversations on gender, race, religion and the making of communities

Saturday & Sunday, 9th & 10th December 2006. The University of Technology, Sydney

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A full conference programme, abstracts and registration details are now available online at 

http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/news_events/not_another_hijab.html

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Despite a decade of 'race debates' in Australia, analyses of the intersections between gender, race and religion remain all 
but absent in the public sphere. In recent years Muslim women in particular have been subjected to intense public 
scrutiny, yet these controversies have largely been limited to provocative comments on the hijab and sharia law. Such 
narrow debates have served to silence the experiences and the concerns of Muslim women and of scholars and 
community workers who engage the intersections of gender, race and religion.

This conference seeks to establish a space for constructive dialogue around the perspectives which are marginalised in 
public discussions, focusing on how gender, race and religion have long been deployed in the construction of Australian 
national identity, and are particularly evident in current representations of 'aggressive' and 'misogynistic' Islam as the 
ultmate alien other in 'tolerant' Judeo-Christian Australia. In minority communities, questions over community leadership, 
representation, and responses to racism have often revolved around constructions of culture, faith and gender roles.

The conference provides a forum for papers and presentations from all disciplinary perspectives in order to build a 
conversation across spectra of belief, scholarship and community. Rather than another 'hijab debate', the conference will 
explore the intersections of gender, race and religion in regards to:

- public space and public safety
- health, housing and education
- security and belonging
- employment and unemployment
- social inclusion and exclusion
- media and public debate
- the dynamics of community
- the politics of representation
- advocacy and activism
- feminisms
- nationalism and national identity
- 'law and order' and representations of crime

'Not another hijab row' is sponsored by Trans/forming Cultures: Key Centre for Communication and Culture, UTS.

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Following 'Not another hijab row' is

The Borderpolitics of Whiteness
11-13 December, 2006

http://www.ccs.mq.edu.au/borderpolitics/

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Dr Tanja Dreher
Research Manager
UTS Shopfront
University of Technology, Sydney
PO Box 123
Broadway NSW 2007
Email: tanja.dreher at uts.edu.au
Phone: (02) 9514 2902
Fax: (02) 9514 2911
www.shopfront.uts.edu.au